The Hand that Draws the Future - Part 6 of 10

A number of studies have arisen out of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and in particular by neurologist Audrey van der Meer. Several studies Dr. van der Meer and her team have shown that both children and adults learn more and remember better when writing and drawing by hand. They first published a paper in 2017 entitled Only Three Fingers Write but the Whole Brain Works: A High-Density EEG Study Showing Advantages of Drawing over Typing for Learning.

In this study twenty students between 21-25 years old from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology were each fitted with a geodesic sensor net with 256 sensors and instructed to type, describe or draw projected Pictionary words within 25 seconds. The subjects’ brain activity were recorded by high-density EEG and mapped in two ways. The first was to measure brain oscillations by frequency, ranging from high frequency to low frequency.

Active high frequency oscillations indicate a state of desynchronization, whereas low frequency oscillations indicate a state of synchronization. In awake animals, desynchronized states are associated with active processing sensory input and behavior while synchronized states are associated with quiet idling conditions. The results of Van der Meer’s study showed that desynchronized (active processing) activity was most prominent when subjects were drawing.

In addition, when mapped in “brain space,” the researchers found that there was no appreciable difference between Describe and Type, so only Describe and Draw were compared. Concentration of high frequency desynchronized activity was found in the right frontal and central regions, while concentrations of low frequency synchronized activity occurred in the parietal and occipital regions.

Desynchronized activity (active processing of sensory input) occurs deep inside the brain, within the limbic region, including the hippocampus. And as we have seen from Roger Beaty’s studies (see Part 5), the pushing of thinking in new directions – or learning from the past in order to imagine the future - is a process activated by the bilateral hippocampus.

So the question I had was: could drawing by hand function like an episodic specificity induction method, inducing and stimulating future design thinking by recombining observations and memories of the built environment through the mechanism of drawing, for example, through field sketching or drawing from memory or even from photographs?

I asked Dr. Beaty how hand drawing might compare to the typical oral or written formats as an ESI method. This was his response: “…if architects are really trying to recall as much detail as they possibly can, and this retrieval process relates to a specific event or episode (time and place), then similar mechanisms may be engaged.” So hand drawing as an ESI, focused on a specific task or project, might induce activity in the default network of the brain, boosting activity in the hippocampus, leading to increased memory recall, and by inference, increased learning and increased creative capacity.

Next up: Right brain versus left brain and learning how to draw.